I read The Road to Serfdom in 2002 and haven't read it since so I may be getting the details wrong. I recall that one of the arguments Hayek makes is that in a planned economy, you will eventually end up with a situation in which there is a single planner, thus leading to despotism. I think his argument is that one can't change a part of a plan without changing the other parts, and thus there must be a single comprehensive plan.
This argument seems pretty flawed to me. At best, it shows that the different parts of the plan can't be developed independently of each other. Why can't a group of people develop a coherent plan in concert? And why would it result in despotism even if there was one planner? These are just my intuitions and I probably dont remember the argument perfectly. Does anyone know of any more thorough critiques which have been published?
